Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo and the team of Brazilian and Paraguayan doctors who are treating him for lymphatic cancer symbolically champagne-toasted with mineral water the last session of chemotherapy, which apparently has been successful.
Brazil plans to cut funding for its state development bank by 50% in 2011 in an effort to bring down the world’s second-highest inflation-adjusted interest rates. The reduction in loans the government provides to BNDES, as the bank is known, forms part of a plan to curb public spending, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said in an interview in Brasilia.
Brazil's natural gas output reached a record 65 million cubic meters a day in October, up 9.3% from the same month in 2009, Brazil's National Petroleum Agency, or ANP, said Tuesday. The gas output was also 1.64% higher than in September, ANP said.